The Shorts

Plot: When Mickey offers to help his elderly goat lady neighbour take out her trash, he quickly learns that he’s in for more than he bargained for.

Short Stuff:

Mickey’s line of “… and have a magical day” is reminiscent of what you might hear from a castmember at Disneyland.

The lone crow ominously cawing from the tree as Mickey is making his way to the backyard is evocative of the recurring crow from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion attraction.

Other than a brief appearance in the title card’s Hieroglyphs in Season Three’s Entombed, this is the first actual cameo from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Let’s hope that this classic character, who even predates Mickey Mouse, gets a starring role this season.

Once again, Goofy reprises his “long man out of the ‘pen” role reminiscent of his other costarring appearances in Bad Ear Day,A Flower for Minnie and Sock Burglar. Here, Goofy is deep in the steaming trash pile, playing poker with a bunch of rats; injecting some much needed life only to disappear as quickly as he appeared.

After pulling both Oswald and Goofy from the pile of garbage, the steamboat from Steamboat Willie (1928) makes the rare vehicular cameo.

Also hidden in the pile of garbage is a novelty telephone made in Mickey’s likeness. This is, perhaps, commentary on landline telephones’ irrelevance in the face of their cellular counterparts.

Why such a big pile of trash? I thought goats eat garbage…

Final Grade: B

Didn’t Mickey learn from Season Three’s No that no good comes from helping people? Lack of continuity aside, this was still a rather pedestrian episode that was saved by some really cool cameos in Oswald and the steamboat.